


Not A Spaceman

by HawthorneWhisperer



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Alien Invasion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 10:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8529925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawthorneWhisperer/pseuds/HawthorneWhisperer
Summary: Ten years ago, aliens invaded Panem.  The human race won and began to rebuild, including a new defense force that was sworn to protect humanity from another invasion.  Gale Hawthorne is a captain in the ESDF while Madge Undersee has turned in her fighter wings to join the legislative division and construct a new, free Panem.  Until the day an enemy long though vanquished returns with a vengeance.(Or: I watched Independence Day: Resurgence last night and was annoyed with a lot of how it went, so I wrote a gadge AU to fix things instead.  Only loosely based on that series of movies and you definitely don't have to have seen Resurgence to follow this.  Also, don't bother to see Resurgence, because it's boring.)





	

President Paylor droned on through the traditional anniversary speech.  She had already read President Undersee’s famous words and now was the point where she recounted the bravery and resilience of the human race for withstanding a months-long alien invasion that left most of Panem destroyed.  Districts 12 and 13 had been all that were left, Thirteen due to their safe position deep underground and Twelve because they just weren’t worth destroying.  Every year in honor of the new Earth Space Defense Force the president held this celebration, and as a resident of the former District Twelve and captain of the ESDF’s most famous squadron, Gale Hawthorne had to be front and center.

Just three paces to his left,Madge Undersee stood with the rest of the legislative division.  Her father died in the last two days of the War, but his inspirational speech had been what gave them the strength to fight until they discovered the flaw in alien bio-tech that led them to victory.  Gale caught her eye and winked, and Madge stifled an eyeroll.  Things had softened between them since those first few months at the Academy— capped off by a few too many swigs of whiskey and a giggly, sloppy dance at the annual Officer’s Ball their last year— but Madge never let him get away with things too easily.

He liked that.

He’d hated her at first, convinced she only got into the ESDF Academy in honor of her father’s last name.  But she proved to be a competent pilot, besting him on a few training runs and finishing in the middle of their class.  He’d been surprised when she chose the legislative path instead, but that night at the Officer’s Ball she told him she felt she could do more good there.  “We have hundreds of pilots now,” Madge had said, tossing back another shot of whiskey.  “I don’t want to fight.  I want to rebuild.”  That had been what made him ask her to dance, because deep down, Gale admired that sort of courage.  For him, fighting was easier; cleaner.  It made him feel like he was doing something tangible.  But people like him couldn’t build a better world— that would take people like Madge.  People with visions, with dreams, with skills beyond killing.

Paylor moved on to the reading of the names of heroes.  The War had no shortage of martyrs, and Gale’s lower back was starting to ache just a little from standing at attention.  He glanced towards Madge but her face was a perfect mask of attention, listening to the endless list as though she didn’t sit through this every year.

He felt it before he heard it.  The platform seemed to ripple underneath his feet and then a sonic boom hit his ear drums.  The crowd screamed and another explosion went off, and then he finally saw them— alien fighters, pouring down from the sky.  Red plasma cannons spit out death with piercing shrieks and bombs rained down from above.  Part of Gale had always expected them to come back because he believed in being prepared for the worst, but even still for a few heartbeats he was frozen on the spot, rooted by shock.

Then he sprang into action.

He dove for Madge and managed to drag her down just as a chunk of rock fell from the building behind them and slammed into his kidney.  President Paylor’s security team was hustling her from the stage, shooting back at any fighters who drew too close.   He shifted to shield Madge's body from the falling rubble with his while all around them, destruction reigned.

 

* * *

 

They were losing.

EDSF was down to barely two squadrons out of the original fifty-six, and most of them were the reserves, pilots who only trained a few months of the year rather than full-time fighters like Gale.  The aliens had spent the last ten years preparing their assault and no matter how much alien tech Panem had adopted, they were outgunned.  Gale stood with the remains of the EDSF and listened as Thresh outlined their last, desperate hope.

“If we can lure the King out of hiding we have a chance at ending this.  They function as a hive-mind, so cutting off the head should kill the rest of the body, or at least leave them vulnerable.”  Quiet footsteps sounded behind him in the hangar, and Gale looked over his shoulder to see Madge in a flightsuit taking her place beside him.  He nodded in recognition, even as relief coursed through him like morphling.

After the attack on the anniversary celebration they had split up.  Madge had gone with the President to help coordinate counterstrikes from hiding, but President Paylor had been lost a month ago when the Nut fell.  Gale had assumed Madge died there and hadn’t given much thought to it when Thresh said a few more reinforcements had arrived that morning.  A faint smile crossed her face and then they both turned their attention to the briefing, but Gale’s shoulders relaxed just a little bit.

She was  _ alive _ .

* * *

 

Gale hugged Rory and Vick before they ran outside to join the ground forces.  They would be the last line of defense against the Hive-King in case this run failed.  They had shut down most of the rest of their defenses, making it look like the base had lost their generators.  If the Hive-King thought they were on the brink of defeat— even more than they already were— he would come to strike the killing blow himself.  And that was when the remaining squadrons would swoop in, hopefully trapping the King between their plasma cannons and the still-well-armed base.

If they succeeded, they would live.  If not, humanity would cease to exist.

No pressure.

Gale ran his fingers over the wingtips of his fighter one last time, checking for notches and cracks that could slow him down, and someone cleared her throat from the other side.  “Good to see you, Undersee,” Gale said as he ducked under the nose.

“You too.  I assumed you’d gone down in the ambush in Seven.”

“I did,” Gale confirmed.  He’d lost Thom that day, and nearly lost Katniss too.  She had been wounded so badly she was now down in med bay with Peeta by her side— Mrs. Everdeen said she’d pull through, but if they didn’t bring down the King there wasn’t much point.  “Took me nearly a week to get back to base.”

For a moment they both fell silent.  This was it; the last time they might ever see each other.  Gale was not much for words— that was Peeta’s department— but facing down death for the last four months had made him realize that sometimes, you just had to say it.

“Madge, I—” he said but across the hangar, Thresh boomed out the order to mount up.

Madge stepped back and zipped her flightsuit up to her neck.  “Tell me later,” she said with a crooked grin, her blue eyes dancing.  “Right now, we’ve got ourselves an alien sonofabitch to kill.”

 

* * *

 

 

The dogfight started in their favor, but then everything went to hell.  They’d lost over half a dozen fighters to the Hive-King’s tentacles, which sent out an electric pulse that fried their systems whenever one made contact with a jet.  That was a new one, and it took precious time for them to alter their flight patterns to avoid the swirling, flailing tentacles that streamed from beneath the Hive-King’s arms.  Another dozen jets had gone down to enemy fire, and four had been called back to defend the base from the incoming ground assault.  That left three fighters of the original twenty-four.  Three pilots were all that stood between humanity and certain destruction.

But finally, they had him on the ropes.  They’d pushed the Hive-King back from the base and onto the broad expense of the salt flats, but they were running low on ammo.  Madge’s fusion bombs were jammed and Johanna Mason’s plasma cannons were completely tapped out.  Johanna had taken to dive-bombing the Hive-King to distract him, barrel rolling away at the last possible second and keeping her fighter just out of reach.  The Hive-King roared in frustration, but then Mason’s engines stuttered and her fighter stalled.

Gale shot towards her to give her covering fire.  He laid down a run of plasma blasts while she battled the controls, but when he tried to turn and start another run he miscalculated the distance between himself and the Hive-King.  His jet spun uncontrollably as a tentacle hit his wingand he managed to pull away before the electrical surge hit.

But it was too late.  The electrical systems were online, but he’d lost an engine and most of his left wing.  He couldn’t steer, couldn’t do anything except fall.  He was spiraling towards the ground and slapped at his radio comm.

It was now or never.  

“Madge—”

“Eject, Gale, we’ve got this,” she snapped.

“Madge, you have know—”

“I said eject,” Madge interrupted, but he never got the chance.  His jet hit another tentacle and in the ensuing surge his head hit the canopy.

Then all that was left was black.

 

* * *

 

Gale came to in a pile of smoking wreckage.  Out across the flats he could see the Hive-King advancing on another downed jet.  He fought his way out through the shattered canopy and gulped down fresh air tinged with the acrid smoke of burning plastic and alien tech.  He was battered and cut in several places, but alive and with no major injuries as far as he could tell.

Mason’s was the only fighter left aloft and it was nudging the Hive-King closer and closer to the pile of wreckage.  The sun blazed down on him and up ahead, he could just make out a familiar form.  Madge stood in front of a burning heap of metal that had once been her fighter and waved her arms.  “Hey, asshole!” she yelled at the giant, lurching creature.  “Yeah, you.  Get your ugly ass over here.”

The Hive-King took a teetering step forward.  He was favoring his middle two legs, which meant that between Gale’s crash and now, they had managed to take out the other three.  Madge backed up and skirted her fighter while Mason kept buzzing him to keep him from focusing too hard on whatever trap they had set.  The Hive-King lurched forward again and Madge turned and ran for a small outcropping of rocks.

And the moment the Hive-King stepped over the remains of her jet, the entire thing exploded.

There was a shriek of pain, not from the Hive-King but from the flagship behind them.  It was as if every alien on board had screamed, and then suddenly it was crumbling.  The complicated biotech that held the disparate pods together must have been linked to the Hive-King and without it, it the flagship started to die.  The ground shook as pod after pod dropped from the sky and shattered on impact.

She’d done it.

Gale broke into a run just as Madge emerged from her hiding place.  She’d unzipped her flightsuit to her waist, the arms flopping around her hips and her white undershirt dirty and torn.  He’d never seen anything more beautiful.

Madge spotted him when he was still twenty yards away.  Mason was booking it back to the base, leaving them alone out on the empty salt flats.  The Hive-King’s corpse was burning, pillars of grey-green smoke rolling up into the sky while behind him, the flagship was crashing and breaking into millions of pieces.  A smile split Madge’s face in two and she started running towards him.

Gale skidded to a stop when he reached her, but Madge didn’t slow down her approach.  She ran full-steam into him and jumped, her legs wrapping around his waist as she kissed him full-on the lips.  She was sweaty and sticky and Gale had blood dripping down the side of his neck from a cut, but none of that mattered because they were alive and the Hive-King was dead.  “You did it,” he gasped between furious, desperate kisses.

Madge tipped her head back far enough to look at him.  Her blue eyes were clear and happy.  “You’re goddamn right I did.”

**Author's Note:**

> I made the alien have a Hive-King instead of a Hive-Queen because I'm sick of "this race of aliens has a female leader and that's how we know they're fundamentally different from us."
> 
> As always, title courtesy of the band Journey.


End file.
